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Networked data is commonly observed in many high-impact domains, ranging from social networks, collaboration platforms to biological systems. In such systems, the nodes are often associated with high dimensional features while remain connected to each other through pairwise interactions. Recently, various unsupervised feature selection methods have been developed to distill actionable insights from such data by finding a subset of relevant features that are highly correlated with the observed node connections. Although practically useful, those methods predominantly assume that the nodes on the network are organized in a flat structure, which is rarely the case in reality. In fact, the nodes in most, if not all, of the networks can be organized into a hierarchical structure. For example, in a collaboration network, researchers can be clustered into different research areas at the coarsest level and are further specified into different sub-areas at a finer level. Recent studies have shown that such hierarchical structure can help advance various learning problems including clustering and matrix completion. Motivated by the success, in this paper, we propose a novel unsupervised feature selection framework (HNFS) on networked data. HNFS can simultaneously learn the implicit hierarchical structure among the nodes and embed the hierarchical structure into the feature selection process. Empirical evaluations on various real-world datasets validate the superiority of our proposed framework.

Additional file 5. NAC proteins of two wild peanuts.

As a crucial prerequisite for graph mining, graph alignment aims to find node correspondences across multiple correlated graphs. The main difficulty of graph alignment lies in how to seamlessly bridge multiple graphs with distinct topology structures and attribute distributions. A vast majority of earlier efforts tackle this problem based on alignment consistency, which directly measures the attribute and structure similarity of nodes. However, alignment consistency is prone to be violated due to the radically different patterns owned by different graphs. Another group of methods tackle the problem in a supervised manner by learning a mapping function that maps the node representations of both the source and target graphs into the same feature space. However, these methods heavily rely on observed anchor links between different graphs while these anchor links are usually limited or even absent in many real-world applications. To address these issues, we propose an unsupervised cross-graph representation learning framework to jointly learn the node representations of different graphs in a unified deep model. Specifically, we employ an auto-encoder model to learn the cross-graph node representations based on both attribute and structure reconstruction, where source and target graphs share the same encoder but are decoded by their respective decoders. To step further, we also introduce a discriminator to better align the learned representations for different graphs via adversarial training. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Zero-shot object detection (ZSD), the task that extends conventional detection models to detecting objects from unseen categories, has emerged as a new challenge in computer vision. Most existing approaches tackle the ZSD task with a strict mapping-transfer strategy, which may lead to suboptimal ZSD results: 1) the learning process of those models ignores the available unseen class information, and thus can be easily biased towards the seen categories; 2) the original visual feature space is not well-structured and lack of discriminative information. To address these issues, we develop a novel Semantics-Guided Contrastive Network for ZSD, named ContrastZSD, a detection framework that first brings contrastive learning mechanism into the realm of zero-shot detection. Particularly, ContrastZSD incorporates two semantics-guided contrastive learning subnets that contrast between region-category and region-region pairs respectively. The pairwise contrastive tasks take advantage of additional supervision signals derived from both ground truth label and pre-defined class similarity distribution. Under the guidance of those explicit semantic supervision, the model can learn more knowledge about unseen categories to avoid the bias problem to seen concepts, while optimizing the data structure of visual features to be more discriminative for better visual-semantic alignment. Extensive experiments are conducted on two popular benchmarks for ZSD, i.e., PASCAL VOC and MS COCO. Results show that our method outperforms the previous state-of-the-art on both ZSD and generalized ZSD tasks., 15 pages, Accepted

Characterization of natural colloids is the key to understand pollutant fate and transport in the environment. The present study investigates the relationship between size and fluorescence properties of colloidal organic matter (COM) from five tributaries of Poyang Lake. Colloids were size-fractionated using cross-flow ultrafiltration and their fluorescence properties were measured by three-dimensional excitation-emission matrix fluorescence spectroscopy (3D-EEM). Parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) and/or Self-organizing map (SOM) were applied to assess fluorescence properties as proxy indicators for the different size of colloids. PARAFAC analysis identified four fluorescence components including three humic-like components (C1-C3) and a protein-like component (C4). These four fluorescence components, and in particular the protein-like component, are primarily present in1 kDa phase. For the colloidal fractions (1-10 kDa, 10-100 kDa, and 100 kDa-0.7 μm), the majority of fluorophores are associated with the smallest size fraction. SOM analysis demonstrated that relatively high fluorescence intensity and aromaticity occur primarily in1 kDa phase, followed by 1-10 kDa colloids. Coupling PARAFAC and SOM facilitate the visualization and interpretation of the relationship between colloidal size and fluorescence properties with fewer input variables, shorter running time, higher reliability, and nondestructive results. Fluorescence indices analysis reveals that the smallest colloidal fraction (1-10 kDa) was dominated by higher humified and less autochthonous COM.

Solar irradiation (λ ≥ 290 nm) has been introduced into a traditional Fe2+ activated persulfate (PS) system (Fe2+/PS). The combination system of solar light, Fe2+ and PS system (solar/Fe2+/PS) exhibited a rapid and continuous oxidation of chloramphenicol (CAP) in solution, and showed great advantages over the Fe2+/PS process by accelerated degradation efficiency. A presumed reason is that Fe2+ was slowly and continuously recycled by solar light, and the reductive photolysis Fe3+ to Fe2+ was promoted concomitantly with the production of additional hydroxyl radical (HO ). The optimal dosages of PS and Fe2+ were determined by batch experiments. pH significantly influenced CAP degradation, and an acidic condition favored the reaction. Both HO and sulfate radical (SO4 −) were considered to be the mainly oxidant to remove CAP, and HO had a higher contribution than SO4 −. The presence of HCO3−, NO3−, NO2−, H2PO4−, HPO42− demonstrated adverse effects on CAP decay in solar/Fe2+/PS process. Coexisting Cl− ions slightly accelerated the CAP degradation rate at an appropriate concentration (0.6–6 mM) but gradually inhibited at a higher Cl− (12–36 mM) content. The results clearly showed that CAP presented the slowest degradation rate in wastewater, and the colloids should be taken into consideration prior to the application of solar/Fe2+/PS for wastewater treatment. Nonetheless, up to 89.7%, 94.7%, and 65.4% of CAP were removed from the filtrate, permeate, and retentate within 100 min, respectively. It is expected that the modified process could be applied for CAP removal from wastewater containing a considerable colloids/organic content. Finally, 8 major intermediate products were identified and the preliminary degradation pathways were proposed.

Background Curcumin is a natural polyphenol with beneficial effects on NAFLD patients and NAFLD is accompanied by metabolism decompensation. Methods This study was focused on the effect of curcumin on the relationship between endogenous bile acids metabolism pathway and exogenous xenobiotics metabolism pathway in C57BL/6 mice of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease induced by high-fat and high-fructose diet (HFHFr) and in cultured mice hepatocytes. Results Our results showed curcumin treatment apparently attenuated the hepatic steatosis and reversed the abnormalities of serum biochemical parameters in HFHFr-fed mice. Curcumin effectively reversed the expression of CYP3A and CYP7A in fatty liver status to restore metabolism capability. In the meantime, lipid synthesis has been controlled by curcumin, evidenced by the expression of CD36, SREBP-1c and FAS. Further, FXR, SHP and Nrf2 expressions were remarkably dropped in HFHFr-fed mice and LXRα expression was significantly enhanced, while curcumin treatment was quite effective to restore this pathway. In addition, LXRα antagonist GGPP pretreatment weakened the curcumin effects on CYP3A, CYP7A and SREBP-1c. Conclusions These findings indicate that the Nrf2/FXR/LXRα pathway might synergistically regulate both endogenous and exogenous metabolism in NAFLD mice and LXRα may be a novel therapeutic target of curcumin for the prevention and treatment of NAFLD.

Background and aims The monocyte to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol ratio (MHR) is associated with multiple cardiovascular diseases. However, the role of the MHR in predicting cardiovascular diseases in patients on peritoneal dialysis remains unclear. Methods and results Eight hundred and eighty incident peritoneal dialysis patients were enrolled from November 1, 2005, to February 28, 2017, and followed until May 31, 2017. Primary outcomes were cardiovascular events. Using the X-tile program, these patients were divided into three groups according to the MHR. Kaplan–Meier method and Cox regressions were used for survival analysis. During a median follow-up period of 26 months (interquartile range: 12–39 months), 139 cardiovascular events were recorded. After multiple adjustment, the high MHR group was associated with a 1.97-fold increase in the cardiovascular events hazard compared to that of the low group in the overall population (hazard ratio: 1.97; 95% CI, 1.19–3.28; P = 0.009). Subgroup analysis demonstrated that the association between the MHR and a higher risk of cardiovascular events was strongest in the subgroup of patients with diabetes (P for interaction = 0.004). In this subgroup, the high MHR group was found to be associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular events compared to the low group (hazard ratio: 7.69; 95% CI, 2.76–21.47). Conclusion This study suggests that the MHR is independently associated with the risk of cardiovascular events in patients undergoing peritoneal dialysis, and diabetes status can influence the association between the MHR and the risk of cardiovascular events.

Background To investigate the association between the ratio of apolipoprotein B (apo B) / apolipoprotein A1 (apo A1) with all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events in peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients. Methods Eight hundred and sixty incident PD patients were enrolled from November 1, 2005, to February 28, 2017, and followed until May 31, 2017. Outcomes were all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events. Associations between the apo B/apo A1 ratio with all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events were evaluated using multivariable-adjusted Cox models. Results Of the 860 patients, the mean age was 49.9 ± 14.5 years, 57.6% were men, and 19.3% were diabetic patients. The median apo B/apo A1 ratio was 0.65 (range: 0.22–2.24). During a median follow-up period of 27 months (interquartile range, 13 – 41 months), 202 deaths, and 145 cardiovascular events were recorded. After adjustment for age, sex, body mass index, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, systolic blood pressure, total Kt/V, estimated glomerular filtration rate, hemoglobin level, neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio and albumin, triglyceride, and cholesterol, as well as the use of lipid-lowering agents, the highest apo B/apo A1 ratio tertile was significantly associated with a hazard ratio for all-cause mortality of 1.60 (95% CI: 1.02 to 2.49, P = 0.040) and for cardiovascular events of 2.04 (95% CI: 1.21 to 3.44, P = 0.008). Conclusion An increased apo B/apo A1 ratio was independently associated with all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events in PD patients.

Recent studies have demonstrated the advantages of fusing multi-modal features in improving the accuracy of visual object classification. However, regarding a complex classification task with a large number of categories, previous studies on multiple feature fusion are prone to failure resulting from the occurrence of class ambiguity. In this paper, we address this issue by allowing k ( k ≥ 2) guesses at the top instead of only considering the one with the largest prediction score in the framework of multi-view learning. This strategy relaxes the penalty for making an error in the top- k predictions, which can mitigate the challenge of class ambiguity to some extent. To fuse multiple features effectively, we introduce an adaptive weight for each view and exploit an efficient alternating optimization algorithm to learn the optimal classifiers and their corresponding weights jointly. Extensive experiments on several benchmark datasets illustrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed model over the state-of-the-art approaches.

Silybin is one of the effective, traditional Chinese medicines used as a hepatoprotective agent in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) therapy worldwide, and the NOD-like receptor family pyrin domain-containing 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome has been recognized as an important factor involved in NAFLD development. However, little is known about the mechanisms of silybin in the regulation of high-fat diet (HFD)-induced liver inflammation. In our study, we found that silybin inhibited endoplasmic reticulum stress and NLRP3 inflammasome activation in the livers of HFD-fed mice and in cultured hepatocytes. Phosphorylation of inositol-requiring enzyme (IRE)1α and eIF2α, expression of thioredoxin-interacting protein and cleaved caspase-1, and release of IL-1β were reduced by silybin. In addition, silybin inhibited the approach of calreticulin and translocase of outer membrane 20 (Tom20), prevented assembly of the NLRP3 inflammasome complex, and suppressed the accumulation of acetylated α-tubulin in the perinuclear region. Both MEC-17 and sirtuin 2 (SIRT2) were influenced by palmitate and silybin, whereas histone deacetylase 6 was not affected. In addition, supplementing NAD+ directly or increasing NAD+ concentration with silybin could maintain the activity of SIRT2. The anti-inflammatory effect of silybin was blocked by SIRT2 silencing or by the SIRT2 inhibitor AGK2, as evidenced by NLRP3/ASC colocalization, AC-α-tubulin expression, and IL-1β release. These findings indicate that the NAD+/SIRT2 pathway is an important mediator through which silybin prevents NLRP3 inflammasome activation during NAFLD.-Zhang, B., Xu, D., She, L., Wang, Z., Yang, N., Sun, R., Zhang, Y., Yan, C., Wei, Q., Aa, J., Liu, B., Wang, G., Xie, Y. Silybin inhibits NLRP3 inflammasome assembly through the NAD+/SIRT2 pathway in mice with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

In this work, switchable hydrophilicity solvent-based ultrasound-assisted liquid phase microextraction (SHS-UA-LPME) was combined with micro-volume UV-vis spectrophotometry for the determination of trace nickel in the medicinal plant Gentiana rigescens Franch. ex Hemsl. (G. rigescens) samples for the first time. Micro-volume spectrophotometry has the characteristics of microanalysis, economy and low operation cost, which is feasible to be combined with miniaturized enrichment method. Dipropylamine (DPA) as a switchable solvent completed the extraction during the phase conversion process. It was changed from hydrophobic to hydrophilic under the action of HCl, and then completed phase transition under the action of NaOH. The parameters influencing the extraction efficiency were investigated. Under the optimal conditions, the enhancement factor (EF), the limit of detection (LOD), the limit of quantitation (LOQ) and relative standard deviation (RSD, n = 7) were 28, 0.02 µg/L, 0.067 µg/L and 1.4%, respectively. The established method was applied to the determination of G. rigescens samples collected from the local field with satisfactory results.

In this work, switchable hydrophilicity solvent-based extraction (SHSE) was combined with inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) for the determination of trace lead (Pb) in environmental water and soil samples. During the phase transformation of SHSE, the organic phase appeared to capture the target analytes effectively. The resultant sample solution was heated to remove the organic phase, realizing the successful combination with ICP-OES. The sensitivity was obviously improved by adding non-ionic surfactant Triton X-114 (TX-114) and the sensitization factor of 3.8 was achieved. Under the optimal conditions, the limit of detection (LOD) and enhancement factor (EF) were 0.07 μg/L and 38, respectively. The established method was applied to analyze environmental samples and certified reference material with satisfactory results. The analytical results of environmental samples were in great agreement with those obtained by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The established method provides a promising, simple and sensitive approach for the determination of trace Pb in environmental samples.

Objective Salvianolic acid A (SAA) has a significant protective effect on ischemia/reperfusion injury of brain. However, it is not clear for SAA to exert its cerebral protection by targeting at the microvascular endothelial cells of blood brain barrier (BBB). Our previous study demonstrated that SAA could hardly pass through the BBB. This present study was therefore designed to investigate the protective effect of SAA on brain microvascular endothelial cells (BMECs) induced by deprivation and reperfusion with oxygen-glucose. Methods Rat BMECs were treated with oxygen glucose deprivation (OGD), followed by reperfusion (OGD/R). Cell viability was assessed by MTT and the content of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in cells after OGD/R in the absence or presence of SAA. GC-MS based metabolomic platform was applied to evaluate the regulation of SAA on the cellular metabolic perturbation induced by OGD/R. Results OGD/R significantly increased the production of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS), and decreased the activity of cells. SAA significantly reduced ROS and improve the cell viability. Metabolomic study revealed distinct perturbation of metabolic pathways of energy metabolism in the BMEC induced by OGD/R, while SAA significantly regulated the perturbed metabolism involved in energy metabolism pathways, especially for intermediates in TCA cycle. Conclusion SAA shows protective effects on BMECs involved in central nervous system.

© 1992-2012 IEEE. Spectral clustering plays a significant role in applications that rely on multi-view data due to its well-defined mathematical framework and excellent performance on arbitrarily-shaped clusters. Unfortunately, directly optimizing the spectral clustering inevitably results in an NP-hard problem due to the discrete constraints on the clustering labels. Hence, conventional approaches intuitively include a relax-and-discretize strategy to approximate the original solution. However, there are no principles in this strategy that prevent the possibility of information loss between each stage of the process. This uncertainty is aggravated when a procedure of heterogeneous features fusion has to be included in multi-view spectral clustering. In this paper, we avoid an NP-hard optimization problem and develop a general framework for multi-view discrete graph clustering by directly learning a consensus partition across multiple views, instead of using the relax-and-discretize strategy. An effective re-weighting optimization algorithm is exploited to solve the proposed challenging problem. Further, we provide a theoretical analysis of the model's convergence properties and computational complexity for the proposed algorithm. Extensive experiments on several benchmark datasets verify the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed algorithm on clustering and image segmentation tasks.

Our pilot study suggested that orally administered crocin was hardly absorbed into circulatory system, but it was effective against cerebral ischemic/reperfusion (I/R) injury. The pharmacologically active component and targeting site of crocin remain elusive. In this study, the cerebral-protective effect of crocin was evaluated on a rat transient middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) model. Our data showed that oral administration of crocin had better effectiveness in cerebral protection than an intravenous injection. Neither crocin nor its metabolite crocetin were determined in the brain of cerebral I/R rats, indicating a target site of periphery. Abundant crocetin was detected in plasma after oral administration instead of intravenous injection of crocin. Meanwhile, orally administered crocetin showed similar cerebral protection to that of crocin, but this exciting effect was not clearly observed by intravenous administration of crocetin, indicating the importance of crocetin in gut. Moreover, orally administered crocin showed less cerebral-protective effect in pseudo germ-free (pGF) MCAO rats. In vitro and in vivo experiments confirmed that crocin could be deglycosylated to crocetin in gut content of normal rats, rather than that of pGF rats, indicating that gut microbiota facilitated the transformation of crocin into crocetin, which played a key role in the activation of the pharmacological effect. Metabolomic study revealed that microbial-host co-metabolic molecules were significantly perturbed after oral administration of crocin, indicating a regulation on intestinal ecosystem. It was further suggested that gut microbiota may be the potential target of the cerebral-protective effect of crocin.

Abiotic stresses comprise all nonliving factors, such as soil salinity, drought, extreme temperatures, and metal toxicity, posing a serious threat to agriculture and affecting the plant production around the world. Peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is one of the most important crops for vegetable oil, proteins, minerals, and vitamins in the world. Therefore, it is of importance to understand the molecular mechanism of peanut against salt stress. Six transcriptome sequencing libraries including 24-hour salt treatments and control samples were constructed from the young leaves of peanut. A comprehensive analysis between two groups detected 3,425 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) including 2,013 upregulated genes and 1,412 downregulated genes. Of these DEGs, 141 transcription factors (TFs) mainly consisting of MYB, AP2/ERF, WRKY, bHLH, and HSF were identified in response to salinity stress. Further, GO categories of the DEGs highly related to regulation of cell growth, cell periphery, sustained external encapsulating structure, cell wall organization or biogenesis, antioxidant activity, and peroxidase activity were significantly enriched for upregulated DEGs. The function of downregulated DEGs was mainly enriched in regulation of metabolic processes, oxidoreductase activity, and catalytic activity. Fourteen DEGs with response to salt tolerance were validated by real-time PCR. Taken together, the identification of DEGs' response to salt tolerance of cultivated peanut will provide a solid foundation for improving salt-tolerant peanut genetic manipulation in the future.

Additional file 2. The genes that have been identified from the twelve acquired chloroplast genomes. Intron-containing genes are marked by asterisks (*).

Paeoniflorin shows distinct anti-arthritis and immunoregulatory activities, but its rather low bioavailability via oral administration greatly challenges its known mechanism of in vivo activity. Our data showed that oral administration, instead of intraperitoneal injection, of paeoniflorin significantly reduced the polyarthritis index by 44.4%, reduced paw swelling by 18.4% and delayed the onset of arthritis in collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) mice. Oral paeoniflorin treatment also downregulated the systemic pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-6 (by 52.2%), TNF-α (by 57.7%) and IL-1β (by 34.1%). A pharmacokinetic study revealed that the maximal plasma concentration of paeoniflorin after oral administration was 4.8 ± 1.9 μM in the CIA mice, much lower than the effective concentration in vitro (30 μM). In contrast, paeoniflorin was highly concentrated in the gut content, intestine and Peyer’s patches. T cell analysis showed that paeoniflorin markedly reduced transcription factors of Th1 and Th17, inhibited Th1 by 22.2% and 23.1% and Th17 by 43.2% and 25.4% (p

The lack of labeled exemplars makes video classification based on supervised neural networks difficult and challenging. Utilizing external memory that contains task-related knowledge is a beneficial way to learn a category from a handful of samples; however, most existing memory-augmented neural networks still struggle to provide a satisfactory solution for multi-modal external data due to the high dimensionality and massive volume. In light of this, we propose a Memory Transformation Network (MTN) to convert external knowledge, by involving embedded and concentrated memories, so as to leverage it feasibly for video classification with weak supervision. Specifically, we employ a multi-modal deep autoencoder to project external visual and textual information onto a shared space to produce joint embedded memory, which can capture the correlation amongst different modalities to enhance the expressive ability. The curse of dimensionality issue can also be alleviated owing to the inherent dimension reduction ability of the autoencoder. Besides, an attention-based compression mechanism is employed to generate concentrated memory, which records useful information related to a specific task. In this way, the obtained concentrated memory is relatively lightweight to mitigate the time-consuming content-based addressing on large-volume memory. Our model outperforms the state-of-the-arts by 5.44% and 1.81% on average in two metrics over three real-world video datasets, demonstrating its effectiveness and superiority on visual classification with limited labeled exemplars.

Natural colloid properties and the impact of human activities on these properties are important considerations for studies seeking to understand the fate and transport of pollutants. In this study, the relationship between size and fluorescence properties of natural colloids from 4 different sources were quantified using a multi-method analytical approach including UV-visible and fluorescence spectroscopy, flow field flow fractionation (FlFFF) coupled online to fluorescence spectrometer, and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Results indicate that colloids from pristine natural river water have higher aromaticity and humification, higher fluorescent intensity, and smaller size compared to those from the rivers impacted by livestock. The majority of colloids are smaller than 10nm in size as measured by AFM and FlFFF. Colloid size measured by FlFFF coupled to fluorescence spectroscopy increases in the order peak C (Ex/Em at 300-340/400-460 nm)

In this study, a favorable CO32−/PMS system for efficient degradation of organic contaminants (acid orange 7 (AO7), acetaminophen, para-aminobenzoic acid, phenol, methylene orange, methylene blue) in water was firstly reported. Under optimal conditions, the decolorization ration of AO7 was 100% within 40 min. Data fitting showed that the AO7 decolorization could be described by the pseudo-first-order kinetics, and the rates constant values ranging from 0.0006 to 0.2297 min−1 depending on the operating parameters (initial PMS, CO32−, AO7 concentrations). Radical scavenging studies revealed that superoxide anion radical (O2 −) and singlet oxygen (1O2) rather than sulfate (SO4 −) nor hydroxyl (HO ) were the dominant oxidants might be responsible for AO7 degradation. The presence of NO3−, HPO42− and low concentration of Cl−, NO2−, HCO3−, H2PO4−, HA had no significantly effect on the decolorization of AO7. Adding a higher Cl− concentration displayed favorable effects on the removal efficiencies of AO7, but adding a higher NO2−, HCO3−, H2PO4− and HA concentration apparently inhibited this process. The decolorization of AO7 was lower in wastewater in comparison to other natural waters and ultrapure water, which was probably due to the presence of higher concentration of colloids in wastewater. Nevertheless, up to 94.8%, 97.0% and 85.1% of AO7 were degraded from the filtrate, permeate, and retentate phases of wastewater within 60 min, respectively. Consequently, CO32−/PMS would be promising for removal methodology for AO7 in wastewater containing considerable colloids. Finally, three intermediates were identified and degradation pathways of AO7 were proposed.

© 2017, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. Most existing approaches for person re-identification are designed in a supervised way, undergoing a prohibitively high labeling cost and poor scalability. Besides establishing effective similarity distance metrics, these supervised methods usually focus on constructing discriminative and robust features, which is extremely difficult due to the significant viewpoint variations. To overcome these challenges, we propose a novel unsupervised method, termed as Robust Dictionary Learning with Graph Regularization (RDLGR), which can guarantee view-invariance through learning a dictionary shared by all the camera views. To avoid the significant degradation of performance caused by outliers, we employ a capped l2,1-norm based loss to make our model more robust, addressing the problem that traditional quadratic loss is known to be easily dominated by outliers. Considering the lack of labeled cross-view discriminative information in our unsupervised method, we further introduce a cross-view graph Laplacian regularization term into the framework of dictionary learning. As a result, the geographical structure of original data space can be preserved in the learned latent subspace as discriminative information, making it possible to further boost the matching accuracy. Extensive experimental results over four widely used benchmark datasets demonstrate the superiority of the proposed model over the state-of-the-art methods.

This study evaluated the removal of chloramphenicol (CAP) by persulfate (PS) activated by Fe2+ and zerovalent iron (ZVI). Results showed that the Fe2+-PS system ineffectively degraded CAP. However, CAP oxidation accelerated as the number of Fe2+ portions added increased. Comparing with Fe2+, up to 96.1% of CAP was degraded when ZVI was employed as an alternative source of Fe2+. The ZVI-PS system was effective in a broader initial pH range from 3 to 10, and low pH promoted CAP degradation. In addition, the results of scavenging tests suggested that HO center dot, SO4- and O-2(center dot-) contributed to the overall degradation performance, but HO center dot predominated at all pH levels used. The rate of CAP removal slightly increased upon the addition of 1 mM Cl-, but adding Cl- at concentrations higher than 1 mM apparently inhibited CAP degradation. HCO3-, NO3-, NO2-, H2PO4-, HPO42-, and HA significantly inhibited CAP decomposition. Up to 92.8%, 94.7%, and 75.7% of CAP were removed from the filtrate, permeate, and retentate phases of wastewater, respectively. This result indicated that the ZVI-PS system can significantly remove CAP from wastewater and even concentrated wastewater. The intermediate products during oxidation were identified, and the degradation pathways of CAP were tentatively proposed. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Ensuring a suitable pH is a major problem in industrial organic acid fermentation. To circumvent this problem, we used a metabolic profiling approach to analyze metabolite changes in Rhizopus oryzae under different pH conditions. A correlation between fumaric acid production and intracellular metabolic characteristics of R. oryzae was revealed by principal component analysis. The results showed that to help cell survival in the presence of low pH, R. oryzae altered amino acid and fatty acid metabolism and promoted sugar or sugar alcohol synthesis, corresponding with a suppressing of energy metabolism, phenylalanine, and tyrosine synthesis and finally resulting in the low performance of fumaric acid production. Based on this observation, 1 % linoleic acid was added to the culture medium in pH 3.0 to decrease the carbon demand for cell survival, and the fumaric acid titer was enhanced by 39.7 % compared with the control (pH 3.0 without linoleic acid addition), reaching 18.3 g/L after 84 h of fermentation. These findings provide new insights into the mechanism by which R. oryzae responds to acidic stress and would be helpful for the development of efficient strategies for fumaric acid production at low pH.

The occurrence and distribution of six selected estrogen compounds were investigated in samples of surface water, suspended particulate matter (SPM), and sediment in the Yangtze Estuary and its coastal areas over four seasons. With the exception of 17α-ethinylestradiol (EE2), all estrogens were detected at least once in all three phases with bisphenol A (BPA) and estriol (E3) as the dominant estrogens in all phases. EE2 was not detected in any surface water samples. In addition, the highest total estrogen concentrations were found in January in all phases, which could be due to the low flow conditions and temperature during this season. A significant positive correlation was found between total estrogen concentrations and organic carbon (OC) contents, both in the water phase and solid phase (i.e. SPM and sediment), indicating the vital role played by OC. Based on a yeast estrogen screen (YES) bioassay, the higher estrogenic risk was found in the SPM and sediment phase when compared to the water phase. These results were confirmed by a risk assessment which revealed that the Yangtze Estuary was displayed a low to high risk over the seasons for all selected estrogens.

Silybin is one of the effective, traditional Chinese medicines used as a hepatoprotective agent in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) therapy worldwide, and the NOD-like receptor family pyrin domain-containing 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome has been recognized as an important factor involved in NAFLD development. However, little is known about the mechanisms of silybin in the regulation of high-fat diet (HFD)-induced liver inflammation. In our study, we found that silybin inhibited endoplasmic reticulum stress and NLRP3 inflammasome activation in the livers of HFD-fed mice and in cultured hepatocytes. Phosphorylation of inositol-requiring enzyme (IRE)1α and eIF2α, expression of thioredoxin-interacting protein and cleaved caspase-1, and release of IL-1β were reduced by silybin. In addition, silybin inhibited the approach of calreticulin and translocase of outer membrane 20 (Tom20), prevented assembly of the NLRP3 inflammasome complex, and suppressed the accumulation of acetylated α-tubulin in the perinuclear region. Both MEC-17 and sirtuin 2 (SIRT2) were influenced by palmitate and silybin, whereas histone deacetylase 6 was not affected. In addition, supplementing NAD

The early diagnosis of diabetic nephropathy (DN) is rather challenging. Our previous study suggested that citric acid is a potential marker for the early diagnosis of diabetic nephropathy in db/db mice. For the first time, in this study, a surrogate analyte of 13C6-citric acid was employed to generate calibration curves for the quantitative measurement of the endogenous citric acid in the sera of db/db mice and diabetic nephropathy patients by GC/MS after the analytes were extracted, methoximated and trimethylsilylated. The constant response factor of 13C6-citric acid versus citric acid over the linear range indicated the identical ionization efficiency of these two compounds. The full validation assessments suggested that the method is sensitive, specific, reliable, reproducible and has acceptable parameters. Statistical analysis revealed cut-off citric acid concentrations of 29.24 μg/mL with a 95% confidence interval between 32.75 and 39.16 μg/mL in the diabetic nephropathy patients and 16.74 and 22.57 μg/mL in the normal controls. The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves indicated accuracies of over 90% for the diagnoses of early diabetic nephropathy in both humans and db/db mice, which suggests that the serum citric acid level is potentially a biomarker that could assist in the diagnosis of diabetic nephropathy.

Berberrubine (BRB) has a strong lipid-lowering effect and can be extensively metabolized into berberrubine-9-O-β-d-glucuronide (BRBG) in vivo. Recently, pharmacokinetics studies showed that the production of BRBG was significantly decreased in the urine of mice fed with a high-fat diet (HFD), indicating a decreased glucuronidation capacity. Based on the UDP-glucuronosyltransferase (UGT) isoform identification, hepatic and renal microsomal incubation, glucuronidation was examined to suggest the metabolism of BRB in liver and kidneys. The results showed that the renal UGT activity for metabolizing BRB markedly decreased, which may be highly related to the decreased expression and activity of renal Ugt1a7c. Surprisingly, in vitro studies revealed neither BRB nor BRBG inhibited the renal UGT activity. By employing an integrated strategy of metabolomics and pharmacokinetics, we identified and confirmed for the first time the inhibitory effect of some potential endogenous molecules on the renal glucuronidation of C57BL/6J mice, such as glutaric acid (GA) and linoleic acid (LA). By employing recombinant human UGTs, we found that GA and LA efficiently affect the activity of recombinant human UGT1A7, 1A9, and 1A8 at their normal or abnormal physiologic levels in vivo. GA (2 mM) markedly inhibited the activity of UGT1A7 by 89.4% and UGT1A9 by 32.8%. The inhibition rates reached 99.3% for UGT1A9, 48.3% for UGT1A7, and 46.8% for UGT1A8 with LA at 200 μM. It has been suggested that the endogenous molecules have the potential to affect the efficiency of glucuronidation, which might be a key factor contributing to individual differences in drug metabolism.

The occurrence and multi-phase distribution of six environmental estrogen compounds were investigated in a drinking water reservoir area by analyzing estrogens in suspended particulate matter (SPM), filtrate (conventional dissolved phase,1 μm), permeate (truly soluble phase,1 kDa) and retentate (colloidal phase, 1 kDa to 1 μm). The estrogen concentrations at different sites occurred in the following order: animal feed operation (AFO) wastewater-affected streamstributariesmain stream channel. Correlation analysis showed that organic carbon (OC) contents had significantly positive correlations with environmental estrogens in filtrate, SPM and colloidal phases, respectively, indicating the important role played by OC. Aquatic colloids, often neglected, showed a much higher sorption capability of environmental estrogens compared to SPM. Similar Kcoc values in three types of sampling sites showed that colloids could be transported from AFO wastewater to tributaries and further into the main river channel. Mass balance calculations showed that 14.5-68.4% of OP, 4.5-32.1% of BPA, 2.0-58.4% of E1, 8.36-72.0% of E2, 0-20.6% of EE2, 3.4-62.7% of E3 and 8.3-36.1% of total estrogens were associated with colloidal fractions, suggesting that the colloids could act as a significant sink for environmental estrogens. Risk assessment demonstrated that the occurrence of environmental estrogens might pose a risk to aquatic organisms in the study area.

The occurrence and distribution of five groups of antibiotics were investigated in the surface sediments of the Yangtze Estuary over four seasons. Four tetracyclines (TCs), sulfaquinoxaline (SQ), enrofloxacin (EFC) and thiamphenicol (TAP) were detected in all the samples, while sulfamerazine (SM) and sulfathiazole (ST) showed the lowest detection frequency. The detection frequencies and antibiotic concentrations were generally higher in January and May, indicating that low flow conditions and low temperature might enhance the persistence of antibiotics in sediment. Antibiotic levels varied with location, with the highest concentrations being observed around river discharges and sewage outfalls. Furthermore, a positive correlation between the concentration of quinolones and TOC revealed the significant role played by TOC. The concentration of quinolones at Wusongkou exceeded the trigger value (0.10 mg kg(-1)) of the Steering Committee of the Veterinary International Committee on Harmonization (VICH), which should be paid attention to in future studies.

The feasibility of using thermally activated persulfate (TAP) to degrade chloramphenicol (CAP) in aqueous solution was evaluated. Results showed that CAP degradation followed a pseudo-first-order model under all conditions tested and the observed rate constants well fitted the Arrhenius equation. CAP degradation rate constants (kobs) increased with increased temperature and sodium persulfate (SPS) dosage. A lower pH resulted in a greater increase in CAP degradation and the highest degradation efficiency was obtained at pH 2.96. Scavenging tests suggested that sulfate radicals ( SO 4 - ) predominated under acidic conditions, whereas hydroxyl radicals (HO ) gradually predominated under alkaline conditions. Coexisting Cl− ions slightly enhanced decomposition at an appropriate concentration ([Cl−]0/[SPS]0 = 1:1) but inhibited degradation at other levels. The effects of NO 3 - , H 2 PO 4 - and HPO 4 2 - on CAP degradation were negligible, whereas NO 2 - , HCO 3 - , and HA significantly inhibited CAP decomposition. The highest degradation rate was achieved with a single SPS injection. Considering that CAP oxidation in the multi-phases of wastewater matrices by TAP presented slower kinetics, 62.2–96.3% removal efficiencies were achieved within 160 min. The TOC removal ratios after 160 min TAP oxidation increased from 10.7% to 90.1% as the [SPS]0/[CAP]0 increased from 1:1 to 80:1, respectively. Overall, eleven intermediate products during TAP oxidation were identified, and a primary reaction mechanism was proposed.

Elevated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) concentrations were determined in different Chinese coals, with the highest concentrations in bituminous coals. Phenanthrene (Phen) was chosen as the probe compound for PAHs to study the sorption behavior of coal. No native Phen was detected in desorption experiments indicating irreversible sorption–desorption behavior of PAHs in raw coal samples. Sorption mechanism was further studied under varying conditions of pH value and ionic strength. Different ranks of coal showed different sorption behavior under acidic, neutral, and alkaline conditions. Batch experiments were further processed for the selected coals at pH values from 3 to 11 at a constant aqueous concentration. Sorption capacities of all coals decreased with increased pH except for YJ coal. Furthermore, although DOC-associated Phen mass contributed little to the total Phen mass under different pH values, the significant negative correlations between M DOC and log K OC values were observed for all coal samples, indicating a significant role played by DOC in the coal sorption. In addition, sorption experiments under varying ionic strength showed that the ionic strength influence was more obvious in sorption isotherms for higher rank coals with increasing ionic strength, and this effect was most significant when ionic strength increased from 0 to 0.15 M, especially at relatively low aqueous concentrations.

The occurrence and distribution of five groups of antibiotics were investigated in the surface water of Yangtze Estuary over four seasons. Of the 20 antibiotics, only sulfamerazine was not detected at all sampling sites, indicating widespread occurrence of antibiotic residues in the study area. Detection frequencies and concentrations of antibiotics were generally higher in January, indicating that low flow conditions and low temperature might enhance the persistence of antibiotics in water. Antibiotic levels varied with location, with the highest concentrations being observed around river discharge and sewage outfall. Furthermore, a positive correlation between total antibiotic and DOC concentrations revealed the significant role played by DOC. Risk assessment based on single compound exposure showed that sulfapyridine and sulfamethoxazole could cause medium risk to daphnid in the Yangtze Estuary. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe how the authors designed a small satellite formation ground test bed in order to study the small satellite formation flying technologies, such as autonomous formation control and network communication. As one of the subsystems, the vision detection system is responsible for the pose (position and orientation) detection of the three small satellite simulators, each of which is composed of a wheeled mobile robot and an on‐board micro control unit. In this paper, the rapid vision locating of the three small satellite simulators in the wide field is discussed.Design/methodology/approachThe scene size required by the test bed has exceeded the scope of one camera, thus how to obtain the complete scene becomes a difficulty. On the base of image mosaic, a vision system composed of two cameras is designed to capture the scene simultaneously. After the two overlapped images are rapidly stitched, the real‐time view of the big scene is attained. Second, the new color tag representing the pose of small satellite simulators is designed, which can be easily identified.FindingsA real‐time multiple mobile robots visual locating system is introduced, in which the global search algorithm and track search algorithm are combined together to identify the real‐time pose of multiple mobile robots. The switching strategy between the two algorithms is given to ensure the accuracy and improve retrieval speed.Originality/valueThe paper shows how, without camera calibration, the pose of each small satellite simulator in the world coordinate system can be directly calculated by the coordinate transformation from the image coordinate system to the world coordinate system based on relative measurement. The accuracy and real‐time performance of the vision detection system have been validated by experiments on locating static tags and dynamic tracking three small satellite simulators.

SUMMARYSpherical robot is a special kind of nonholonomic system that cannot be converted to chained form, which means most of the well-known control methodologies are not suitable for this system. For the trajectory tracking of BHQ-1, a spherical robot designed by our lab, a two-state trajectory tracking controller is proposed in this paper. First, the kinematic model of the robot is built using screw theory and exponential method and the controllability is proved based on the differential geometric control theory. Then to solve the two-state trajectory tracking problem of BHQ-1, a shunting model of neurodynamics and Lyapunov's direct method are combined to design a two-state trajectory tracking controller, of which the Lyapunov stability is validated. Finally, typical simulation examples, such as tracking linear, circular, and sinusoidal trajectories, are introduced to verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller. In this paper the proposed method can also be applied to the control of other spherical robots.

In the present study, phenanthrene was chosen as the probe compound for determining the sorption of PAHs in sediments from Yangtze estuary and nearby coastal area, China. Sorption isotherms were fitted well by the Freundlich and dual models, respectively. Selected sediments were further sequentially separated to remove the carbonate and organic carbon (OC). Calculated OC sorption capacity values based on both H(2)O(2) oxidization and 375 °C combustion methods were similar and comparable to the K(oc) values estimated by the empirical linear sorption equations. Both sorption models and sorption data using sequentially separated samples achieve the similar conclusions: (1) the partition behavior dominated by OC in sediments with f(oc)>0.01; (2) for sediments with 0.001

Objective: Heat Shock Protein 90 (Hsp90) is a molecular chaperone that mediates the post-translational stability of its protein substrates, many of which are onco-proteins. Hsp90 is emerging as an important target for cancer therapy because its inactivation may abrogate multiple signaling pathways simultaneously, irrespective of the mutational status of proteins involved. We disclose here our clinical candidate WXFL1024H251, a novel second-generation small-molecule Hsp90 inhibitor with a chemical structure unrelated to the first generation, the ansamycin family of Hsp90 inhibitors. Method: The anti-proliferative activity of WXFL1024H251 was evaluated in a variety of cancer cell lines in a 96-hour viability assay. QW, Q2W or TIW intravenous administration of at doses of 5~50 mg/kg was used to evaluate the in vivo anti-tumor activity of WXFL1024H251 in BT474 cell line-derived xenograft (CDX) breast cancer model. Effects of WXFL1024H251 on HSP90 function were assessed by western blot analysis of PD markers HSP70, Her2 and p-Her2 in the BT474 tumors. Result: A panel of 20 cancer cell lines were screened for sensitivity to WXFL1024H251. Proliferation of 2 cancer cell lines A549 and BT474 were potently inhibited by WXFL1024H251, with IC50 of 0.007 μM and 0.009 μM, respectively. A549 cell line has KRAS mutation and medium to high EGFR expression. BT474 is an ER+ and ERBB2+ breast cancer cell line. In the BT474 tumor model, 3 week treatment with WXFL1024H251 showed good antitumor efficacy with T/C values of 36% at 7.5 mg/kg Q2W and 45% at 10 mg/kg QW; toxicity were acceptable with both dosing regiments. Conclusion: These preclinical studies showed good antitumor efficacy of WXFL1024H251, which was associated with client protein maturation and HSP70 up-regulation in the tumor tissue. WXFL1024H251 may represent a novel promising clinical antitumor agent for treating breast cancer and other cancer types with high expression of HSP90. Citation Format: Xiaobing yan, Charles Z. Ding, Lihong Hu, Wei Huang, Shuhui Chen, Dongdong Wu, Jiahu Wu, Guoqiang Ma, Qiyao Zhang, Rui Gao, Yusong Zhu, Tiantian Dong, Yizhong Zhu, Caixia Yan, Yan Yan. Preclinical evaluation of WXFL1024H251, a potent second-generation HSP90 inhibitor [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018; 2018 Apr 14-18; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 1672.

A new method of sintering Ca 3 SiO 5 by the combination of conventional and microwave heating methods was studied. The influence of transitional metal oxides such as Fe 2 O 3 , Cr 2 O 3 , MnO 2 , and V 2 O 5 used as the additive of microwave absorption on the microwave-promoted burning of Ca 3 SiO 5 was investigated. The experimental results indicate that the new burning technique is capable of promoting the sintering of Ca 3 SiO 5 . At 1200–1300°C in an electric furnace, Ca 3 SiO 5 can be obtained only when the sample is heated in a microwave for 110–240 s, and the free lime content is below 40wt%. Based on the experiments, Fe 2 O 3 , Cr 2 O 3 , MnO 2 , and V 2 O 5 can enhance microwave sintering. Amongst them, Cr 2 O 3 is the most effective. The characteristic of the X-ray diffraction peaks of Ca 3 SiO 5 is similar to those of standard Ca 3 SiO 5 , but the peaks are wider.

The effect of colloids on the occurrence, phase distribution and photolysis of twenty-seven emerging organic contaminants (EOCs) was studied in domestic and livestock wastewaters (DW and LW), respectively. Filtered water (1 μm) was separated into permeate (1 kDa) and retentate (1 kDa-1 μm) by cross flow ultrafiltration. Results indicated that total concentration of EOCs ranged from 1220 ng L(-1) in permeate of DW to 5065 ng L(-1) in retentate of LW. The average EOC fraction associated with colloids was 13.5% and 14.4% in DW and LW. Most of the EOCs exhibited pseudo-first-order degradation kinetics in all water samples. Control experiments using glass and quartz reactors showed that UV light was more effective on the photolysis of most EOCs. The EOCs photolysis in the three fractions of DW and LW could be accelerated or inhibited compared to ultrapure water with the enhancement factor ranging from -0.94 to 7.33. The impact of colloids on the photolysis of EOCs depended on the compound and the source of water. The photolysis of most EOCs in permeates and filtrates was generally accelerated, while inhibited in the retentates, which could be attributed to the relatively high dissolved organic carbon contents in retentates.

Sulfoaluminate clinkers were made by combination of electric heating and microwave processing. When raw sulfoaluminate materials were heated to 1000–1200 °C conventionally, microwaves were inputted for 1–2 min. The f-CaO of the obtained clinkers was zero. Comparatively, when the samples with the same composition were conventionally heated at 1300 °C for 1 h, the f-CaO of the obtained clinkers was as high as 1.03–4.78%, and when the samples with the same composition were heated only by microwave for 25 min, CaCO3 in the raw materials was not decomposed completely. It is shown that combination of electric heating and microwave processing greatly accelerate clinkering reaction. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) of the clinkers indicates that their mineral composition and XRD patterns are the same as those of the clinkers prepared by conventional firing methods. It has also been proven that Fe2O3 contributed to sulfoaluminate cement clinkering.

A new method of burning Portland cement clinker is studied. The microwave sintering is adopted after the raw meal is heated to certain temperature in an electric furnace. The experimental results show that after the raw meal is heated at a low electric heating temperature (1000–1200 °C) and then further sintered with microwave for 1 to 2 min, Portland cement clinkers can be formed. The f-CaO contents of the clinkers are 1–2%. It has also been found that the higher the temperature of the samples put into the microwave cavity, the shorter the time needed for microwave burning. When the temperature is up to 1300 °C, the sample needs to be heated by microwave for only 40 s, and the f-CaO content decreases to 0.65%. It has been proved by the experiments that (1) the new burning technique can greatly increase the forming speed of Portland cement clinkers, (2) Fe 2 O 3 can enhance the microwave clinkering. XRD patterns of the clinkers show that their mineral compositions and the characteristic XRD peaks are similar to those of clinkers by conventional burning method.

Contaminants that are becoming detected in the environment but are not yet generally regulated or monitored are known collectively as emerging contaminants. In the present study, the occurrence and distribution of 42 emerging organic compounds (EOCs) were investigated in the Yangtze River Estuary and adjacent East China Sea coastal areas. Study compounds were mainly pharmaceuticals, including antibiotics, hormones and sterols, and also included two industrial endocrine disruptors. Samples were analyzed using cross-flow ultrafiltration (CFUF) and ultra-performance liquid chromatograph–tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC–MS/MS). Results revealed that chloramphenicols, sulfonamides and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs were the dominant compounds in filtered samples with relatively high concentrations and detection frequencies. EOC levels varied with location, with the highest concentrations being observed around rivers discharging into the estuary, and near sewage outfalls. Colloids that were separated by CFUF tended to be a sink for EOCs with up to 60% being colloid-associated in the water phase. In addition, colloidal properties, including hydrodynamic size, zeta-potential and organic carbon composition, were found to be the main factors controlling the association of EOCs with aquatic colloids. Moreover, these colloidal properties were all significantly related to salinity, indicating the critical role played by increasing salinity in EOCs–colloids interaction in an estuarine system.